Comet 46P/Wirtanen: a new image – 2 Jan. 2019
The first night of the new year, under a stunning sky, we imaged comet 46P/Wirtanen while it is slowly fading. Below you can see our image.
Comet 46P/Wirtanen: 2 Jan. 2019
The image above comes from the sigma clipping combination of eleven, 300-seconds exposures, unfiltered, remotely collected with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available at the Virtual Telescope Project. The robotic telescope tracked the apparent motion comet Wirtanen, so stars left trails on the background. The sigma clipping technique made possible to reduce the impact of these trails, making the comet better visible. The image scale is 1.2″/pixel.
The comet is still bright, but clearly (and obviously) on its fading trend. As usual, we concentrated on the inner coma, where the nucleus is placed, carefully processing our images to assure the best vision. You can see our past images of the same object here.
We will continue to follow comet 46P intensively, so stay tuned!
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